Does it seem like your life is a roller coaster, going from Tuesday to Tuesday? Does each fateful week pass for you, leaving only disappointment? Is there nothing you want more in life than to stop doing ToC and fling yourself bodily into Icecrown?

For you for whom patience is not enough, I give you these helpful suggestions:

10. Review the strategies for taking down long forgotten bosses as part of the Weekly Raid Quests.

Among other news, there does not appear to be any form of Quel’Delar designed for tanks (boo!). On the plus side, most of this gear is the best itemized we’ve seen to date in WoTLK, so there will be plenty of opportunities for tanking, very soon. Remember though folks, this is PTR loot so it could change very soon (not to mention this is only the loot that we’ve managed to see thus far!.

As I have mentioned before, Tarsus was the first character I made for World of Warcraft. I had dreams of Hordes of Tauren armed with pole-arms tearing it up in PvP spamming /moo. Though after I learned Tauren didn’t have access to the war totems they carried in Warcraft III he was neglected for a while, he will still be five years old in March. That’s pretty darn old for a MMO character.

But it got me thinking. At five years out, this spring, I will have been playing WoW for longer than I’ve played all other MMOs combined. Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, and Ragnarok Online all held my interest for a little while (up to two years in the case of EQ), but never for as long or sustained a period as WoW. So, why is that?

Here’s my thoughts on the matter:

I get to play it with Jov – Playing with your significant other is pretty much better than anything you could ask for, but it’s only a piece of the puzzle (after all, Blizzard is now trying to keep up both of our interests).

The non-realistic graphical style has kept itself surprisingly contemporary – While most MMOs appear seriously dated 5 years out, Blizzard seems to have picked an style that has a certain amount of wiggle room. Any updates that will be applied come Cataclysm will only likely extend its life.

Access to End-Game Content – I was lucky in some ways and thanks to great guild reputation and good references managed to get into the raiding thing pretty much right when my first character hit max level (technically a little before, I suppose). Blizzard has clearly make it a priority to keep that content as accessible as possible and this would certainly explain why.

Fun and amusing leveling content – Giving me some reason to actually level my characters means I have something to do when not raiding. It also means that if I loose my “Access to End-Game Content” I might still play the game.

A community of like-minded individuals – aka a guild. For me, EQ only stayed worthwhile as long as I was with my guild (shout out to any “Holy Monks” that might be reading). It’s demise when the end of my subscription. So it might be said for WoW as well. If Axiom ever kicked the bucket and failed to re-constitute itself (or I failed to find another guild), it probably wouldn’t be long before I was out of here.

The Warrior class – It should be worth mentioning that the actual class I play (and, at that, the one I play almost exclusively!) is a leading contender for the reason that I’m still here 5-years on. I certainly never feel like playing a Warrior tank ever gets stale. If it ever did, I’m not sure if I would be able to play something else.

Is there anything that you, dear reader, feel should be on this list? What keeps you playing when other things might lure you away?

In case you missed it, Onyxia is making a comeback. But let’s be serious here, the encounter mechanics are seriously out of date. Onyxia needs a face-lift, pronto, both to make it fun and make it worthwhile. For your entertainment, may I present a list of sorts of things that desperately need to be updated about Onyxia to catch my interest.

Following up on Monday’s thoughts on leveling prot warriors, it occurs to me I didn’t say anything about who might find it fun. Given all the changes that have been made to Tanking in WoW, I dare say there is no better time to pick up a tank than now. This has been a pretty exclusive club so far, but the dis-incentives that were put into tanking have all but vanished, and the there is that whole Death Knights start at 55 thing going.

That said, some things haven’t changed and I cannot help shake the impression that tanking is still not for everyone. That is perhaps doubly so for we Warriors who Tank. However, given that there will be many people now who are taking a second look at tanking I wanted to provide a bit of insight into what I think characterizes Warrior Tanks. So if you’re thinking of making a tank, or even dual-speccing to tank, consider these following traits.